Huawei Will Continue to Make Smartphones on the Windows Platform

With the launch of the Ascend W1 smartphone at the beginning of this year, Huawei became the fourth company to sell phones running the Microsoft Windows platform. The other three companies are Samsung, HTC and Nokia.

Last week, Microsoft acquired Nokia’s handset business. This came at a cost of $7.2 billion to Microsoft. It is a similar move to Google acquiring Motorola. This means that Microsoft can begin to produce its own hardware.

With this in mind, Huawei said that it will continue to make smartphones running the Windows Phone operating system. On Sept. 12, 2013, Richard Ren, head of Huawei’s consumer unit in Europe, told reporters in Stockholm, “We will continue to develop devices running Windows Phone, and launch more products. We remain one of Microsoft’s strategic partners.”

It seems that Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia’s handset business brought forth some concerns with the companies making smartphones which run Windows Phone. The same concern was seen last year with PC partners when Microsoft launched its own Surface tablets running Windows.

Microsoft describes the Nokia deal as giving it the ability to launch smartphones running Windows Phone on a timelier basis. While there is some concern on the part of analysts that this could put a strain on Microsoft’s relationship with the other handset makers.

In the first half of 2013 Huawei was ranked the fourth largest maker of smartphones. This was calculated by shipment volumes. According to International Data Corp. Huawei shipped 20 million units worldwide.

Since Windows Phone is only a portion and not a major one, of its overall smartphone volume, Huawei will continue to make the devices. The majority of its devices run on the Android platform. Samsung and HTC also use both Windows Phone and Android platforms. In fact, HTC is working on its own OS for the Chinese market.